# Projects

Projects are detected by the presence of well-known "marker" files that identify
the root of the project.

There are some default types, but you can add to it, for example:

```toml
[project_root_markers]

sphinx = ["docs/conf.py"]
```

(or in `pyproject.toml`)

```toml
[tool.ick.project_root_markers]

sphinx = ["docs/conf.py"]
```

These instruct ick to consider the *parent* of where `conf.py` exists to be a
`sphinx` project (likely in addition to a `python` project per default config).

Projects aren't detected within higher-level projects, so if there happens to be
a `pyproject.toml` in the root of your repo, you might want to specify

```toml
skip_project_root_in_repo_root = true
```

and if the autodetection fails for you, set some of

```
explicit_project_dirs = [...]
ignore_project_dirs = [...]
outer_project_dirs = [...]
```

Note that explicit dirs still need to contain markers, so their type can be
inferred.

`outer_project_dirs` tells ick to keep searching for projects beneath those
directories even if a higher-level project was already found. This is useful
for monorepos where `services/` or `apps/` contain their own project roots.

Project-scoped and file-scoped rules stop at nested project boundaries, so a
rule for a parent project will not read or write files that belong to a child
project.